What if DNA hadn’t been discovered ? Similarly, what if the United States was like some other countries that prohibited or severely limited DNA testing ? The lack of DNA evidence would definitely change my research. There are relatives that I likely would not have found and stories that would be lost.
DNA & Genetic Genealogy
We take the knowledge of DNA for granted as it was discovered more than 150 years ago. DNA testing for paternity was developed in the 1980s. By comparison, genetic genealogy is a relatively new field. As such, many misconceptions exist about DNA, DNA testing, and genetic genealogy. Before I jump into what I have found using genetic genealogy, I thought I would address the top seven common misconceptions I regularly see expressed.
Misconception: Testing Anywhere Automatically Matches Anybody
>Complaint: “I tested and I don’t see a match to X.”
>Response: “Did they test with the same company?”
>Answer: “No.”
A DNA match will not show up to someone that hasn’t tested with the same company. So, if you are looking for a specific person (e.g. someone’s child that was adopted), you may not find them. This is why it is recommended that people looking for someone specific test on multiple sites and upload to any that allow it.
Misconception: DNA Results Should Tell Me Who My parent/grandparent is
>Complaint: “The results don’t tell me . . . “
>Related Question: “How can it tell me I am related to an ancestor as they never took a DNA test?”
You can determine your parent or grandparent without them testing IF their descendants or other relatives have tested. However, in most cases, it requires research. The more distant the match; the more work that will be required to find the answer (and this includes a lot of traditional research).
Misconception: You Will Have Many Matches With Your Surname
Because you don’t see your surname among your top matches does NOT mean that you were adopted or the product of an affair. It is not uncommon to find few if any people in your top matches that have your surname.
Misconception: Gender Matters With Autosomal DNA
Question: “Should I have my male cousin test? Will that give me a better match to my dad’s family?”
When using autosomal DNA (E.g. Ancestry.com) it does not matter if you are male or female. In other words, two males will not necessarily match better than a male and a female. However, having multiple people test is very useful, particularly if you are looking for someone several generations back.
Misconception: Testing Company Labels Are Gospel
The labels assigned by the companies are not always how you relate to the person. With the exception of self, parent/child, and sibling labels, which are generally accurate, the other labels are a guess of the relationship. It is important to use dnapainter.com or other reliable source to determine the possible relationships to the match.
Misconception: Ethnicities are 100% Accurate and DNA Inherits Evenly
DNA is not this cut and dried. Each person matches approximately 50% of each parent, but not exactly 50-50. When they have children, there is no guarantee what portion of their DNA the child will get. Hence, the smaller the amount of DNA shared is, the wider the range of potential relationships. In addition, companies are still evolving their data sets and algorithms for these computations. Additionally, each company has different data sets and different algorithms. It is far from settled technology. So, look for it to continue to change.
Misconception: DNA Results Can Be Flawed
The most important rule is that DNA does not lie. Tests may be inadvertently switched by the user or the results may be misinterpreted, but the companies don’t just “get it wrong.” The chances of a test getting switched in the company’s lab is extremely small. And, no, matching mom’s side and not dad’s side is not an error by the company.
My Research
A majority of my personal DNA research has been focused on solving the question of “Who were Lemuel McCracken’s parents?” Lemuel is my great-great grandfather. Thus, this is a complex problem to solve. And, given the genetic distance, proving who his parents are even with extensive genetic and traditional genealogy may not be possible. However, a lot has been learned and many new relatives identified along the way.
Close Relatives Identified
I have determined that 18 DNA matches are descendants of Lemuel and his first wife Sarah Dufer. 59 matches (including myself) descend from Lemuel and our great-great grandmother Louisiana (Mateer) (Badgley) McCracken. And, I have identified 11 DNA matches that descend from Louisiana (Matteer) (Badgley) McCracken through her first marriage. This is a total of 88 cousins this branch of the family that have done DNA testing.
Most are fourth cousins or closer with a few with relationships beyond that. However, it is important to remember that those through other marriages are half relationships. Thus, they generally share a smaller amount of DNA with us.
In identifying these relatives, I found numerous that I did not know existed. Some of them I would have eventually found via the paper trail although research of living people can be challenging. However, others might have been extremely difficult or impossible without genetic genealogy. Some have been placed at the appropriate location in my tree.
Others are still under investigation and are not included in the numbers listed. One example is a sister and brother that have ties to Girard, Kansas. I have been able to determine that they are descendants of Andrew Johnson and Rosa Isabella (Ellis) McCracken. Also, using DNA, I have been able to eliminate certain sons of Andrew and Rosa as their potential grandfather.
Confirming Louisiana’s Name
DNA matches have also provided evidence confirming Louisiana’s maiden name as Matteer. This is important as her name was shown as several different names on different documents. We have matches to 18 direct descendants of her father Mathias Matteer. Additionally, many others have been identified to the Matteer family in general.
Search For Lemuel’s Parents
The search for Lemuel’s parents has consumed hundreds (ok, thousands) of hours. Like most cases, it is a mix of genetic genealogy and traditional genealogy. So little was known about him prior to his marriage to my great-great grandmother Louisiana (Matteer) (Badgley) McCracken that I began to think a space ship just dropped him off in Iowa one day in the early 1850s.
I didn’t even have a specific place to look for records as his location of birth was listed as both Ohio and Pennsylvania. And, nothing more specific was given anywhere. So, I asked as many people as possible to test. It was very useful having results for a lot of people, as some of them matched one family a lot more than another did.
As, a result of efforts to date, Lemuel appears to be the son of a Ms. McCracken and a Mr. Peppard. These two families were first identified with autosomal DNA using primarily ancestry.com, but also on other sites.
McCracken
In the McCracken family, I have been able to determine that Lemuel is likely the son or grandson of James McCracken and Rachel Kelly. To determine this I have found 35 DNA matches that trace directly to James and Rachel. I have also found 20 matches that go back to Julia Ann (McCracken) Byers and 9 to Rachel (McCracken) Lytle . Both women lived in the same county where James lived at the time Lemuel was born. My hypothesis is that they are daughters of his son Thomas, who was deceased prior to Lemuel’s birth.
Additionally, I have found 9 matches to Henry McCracken who raised his family several counties away (referred to as “Henry of Ohio” so as not to be confused with Lemuel’s son Henry). I have also been of the belief that he was also a son of Thomas as it was specified in James’ will that Thomas had sons Henry and William that were underage. A William was also found living in the area where Henry lived.
Assuming Lemuel’s mother was a McCracken, she is the daughter of one of James and Rachel’s daughters or granddaughters. Some of them can be eliminated because they were married and they had children at intervals that would make it impossible or unlikely that they are his mother. A more detailed analysis will be included in a later article.
Peppard
Autosomal data shows a large group of DNA matches to descendants of Jonathan Peppard and his wife Elizabeth Gilmore. To break it down, we match 43 descendants of their son John, 6 of their son William, 21 of their daughter Rebecca, 10 of their son Francis, 26 of their daughter Phoebe, and 14 descendants of their son David. This is a total of 120 DNA matches that have been directly connected to this couple using traditional genealogy.
One of their sons (John, William, Francis, David, and Isaac) would seem to be Lemuel’s father unless there is an unknown son of John. The latter cannot be ruled out yet.
The greatest number of matches are to John. However, numbers of matches alone isn’t meaningful as it depends on the size of families how people many tested, how much shared DNA they have with the tests that I use for research, and whether I can connect them to the tree. It is very possible that if I am able to connect the many outstanding matches that the numbers will shift significantly. In addition, some members of John’s family came to Kansas. Thus, some of these descendants may be the result of mixing with other families that relate to us. That is yet to be determined.
I determined that our surname likely should be Peppard by adding the results of Y-DNA to autosomal DNA research. Without the autosomal DNA, I might think the Peppard was an anomaly and McCracken was the actual surname. However, since the autosomal DNA shows a strong match to both family names and Peppard shows up as a Y-DNA match, it is seems highly likely that Lemuel’s father was a Peppard. Now, it is possible that a McCracken is the parent of a Peppard, but I will explain in the next section how new data shows that to be extremely unlikely.
Throw In a Monkey Wrench
New Y-DNA Match
A recent new Y-DNA match led to new questions. This new match has the last name of Bailey. Talking with a member of the family, I learned that the family was in Vermont and one man served in the Union Army during the Civil War. During that interval, he was stationed at Ft. Riley. There he married and had a son. After the war, the family moved to Oregon and then Canada.
The new match made me wonder how the Bailey family fit into the picture. I questioned if we were all part of the Bailey family. Or, were they both McCrackens? What exactly was going on?
The first thing I did was dig into autosomal DNA looking for matches to descendants of the Bailey family in question. To date, I have identified 18 Bailey DNA matches that I have been able to trace. All of them trace to the son that was born in Kansas. Whether this means anything specific or not is still to be determined.
The Bailey DNA matches also match many of our Peppard DNA matches, but not to McCracken DNA matches in James and Rachel (Kelly) McCracken’s known family. Many of them matched through John Peppard’s sons Thomas and Samuel. Of interest is the fact that those two were both in Kansas by 1859. Given that we have DNA matches across several of Jonathan and Elizabeth (Gilmore) Peppard’s children, it appears that the Baileys are a subset of the Peppards and not the other way around. For the Peppards that we match to be Bailey’s, the connection would have had to had occurred prior to 1744 and likely even earlier. Given the localization of the Bailey DNA matches and the amount of DNA shared, it seems a Peppard must have fathered a Bailey sometime in the 1800s.
Heny of Ohio And The Peppard Family
During this investigation, I discovered that Henry of Ohio’s descendants are similar to us in that they match Bailey DNA matches, Peppard DNA matches, and McCracken DNA matches. This led me to again examine if the Peppard family had a stronger connection to the McCracken family than I realized. To date, none has been found. And, Henry of Ohio’s descendants do not appear to be closer DNA matches to Lemuel’s descendants than James and Rachel (Kelly) McCracken’s descendants. Thus, I am currently scratching my head on this topic.
McCracken-Peppard Relationships As Of September 2024
The above diagram attempts to give a visual of what I believe I am seeing in the DNA relationships between the various McCracken and Peppard lines. All groups have DNA matches not related to the other groups. However, it was not possible to demonstrate that in the diagram. Thus, this diagram simply shows groups that share DNA matches with other groups.
Also, I included Rachel and Julia Ann as a part of James and Rachel’s family. This is not proven; however, it seems highly likely based on DNA matches. Note that so far I have not identified matches between Henry and Rachel or Julia Ann.
Future DNA Research
Who Were Arthur Reid Thomson’s parents?
Arthur Thomson arrived in Canada from Scotland as a teenage orphan. He then immigrated to the United States. We have bits and pieces of stories about his life in Scotland. However, no one has been able to confirm his parents’ names or that of the grandfather with whom he supposedly lived. He is Rod’s great-great grandfather. Thus, the same generationally as Lemuel is to me. However, additional complications may be encountered since he was born in Scotland and his parents died some time before he left Scotland.
Who Were Roger Ellis’ Parents?
Many Ellis families lived in the areas of Kentucky and Indiana where Roger Ellis, my 4th great grandfather lived. However, he claimed to be born in Pennsylvania while many of the others claimed to have been born in Virginia. I have done some research into Washington County, Pennsylvania as various pieces of data lend to that area being a possible location for his family. Some people have identified a man that they believe is his father. However, this appears to be based on them living in a similar area – not on a paper trail.
I have started some basic genetic genealogy work on this project. However, the Lemuel project keeps pulling me away from this one. Additionally, given the number of generations and the fact that Ellis is a common name, it is unclear how fruitful this project will be.
Which Thomas Marshall is the grandfather of Elizabeth Brown Donaldson?
Elizabeth Brown Donaldson claimed to be relation to Chief Justice John Marshall. The paper trail is a bit broken. One researcher who focuses on the Marshall family, connected what he believes to be the family line. However, there was one specific relationship that he could not prove. Additionally, a woman has been in touch with me who is using DNA to solve this question. However, it is a big question that will require a lot of work. Again, this is challenging as it is looking for the parent of a 4th great grandparent and there were at least 3 different family lines, including that of John Marshall, in the same county in the early 1800s.
Did any of Martha (Johnson) Peelle’s siblings have children?
This project is looking for descendants of siblings of my great-great grandmother. The scenario is that there were supposedly eight children in the family. The parents died a couple years apart. Martha’s oldest brother and her youngest sister are known. Both lived in Iowa and visited her in their later years. Both of them married, however, neither of them had any known biological children. The fate of the other five children is unknown.
Can DNA Solve These Problems?
DNA can help find evidence and point us toward a solution. However, the Lemuel project and the other future projects are huge problems. I have already made great progress on Lemuel’s story with families, locations, and more. I fully believe that I can narrow down the answers to any of these projects using a combination of DNA results, traditional genealogy, lots of hard work, and a bit of luck. Proving that the answers are correct is a whole other animal.